Deck of the Week: Orzhov Planeswalker Control

Hello again, Nexites, and welcome to a new edition of “Deck of the Week.” Today, I’ll be sharing a deck that I think is a good choice for the current metagame. It went undefeated in one of MTGO’s Competitive Modern Leagues, and should be something that’s worth trying.

Since Collins Mullen’s Humans deck took down SCG Cincinnati, a lot of players have decided to give the deck a try. One week later, Matt Ling won the SCG Washington Classic using almost the exact same list that put the whole Modern world on notice. And just recently, three more variants of the Humans deck made it to the Top 8 of the SCG Invitational Qualifier in Danbury. It’s about time to adjust to this trend by using a deck that will give it a run for its money.

One look at this list and you’ll notice that this is a control deck. With seven card disruption spells on the main deck, it is able to get rid of Humans’s troublesome cards like Meddling Mage, Kitestail Freebooter, and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. By taking away that element of their deck, you’ll be able to draw out your army of planeswalkers with ease, or wipe out any board presence that they’ve established with the help of Wrath of God and Damnation. The singleton Baneslayer Angel will always come in handy as soon as it hits the battlefield whether you’re ahead or defending.

Orzhov colors have always been flexible when it comes to sideboarding, and this deck’s boarding plan has been well thought of. It has answers to some tricky matchups like Burn with cards like Kor Firewalker, Celestial Purge, and Timely Reinforcements. And if the hand disruption isn’t enough, it also has Runed Halo which is able to shut down combo decks on its own.

If you’re a control player who’s looking for a decent deck, I think that this build is actually pretty good. The mana base is solid, the planeswalkers are all powerful, and the spells are all relevant in today’s metagame. With the relative dearth of true blue control decks, there aren’t too many bad matchups out there for it.

So that’s it for this edition of “Deck of the Week.” Stay posted for our next feature next week. Until then, happy shuffling and thanks for reading!

4 thoughts on “Deck of the Week: Orzhov Planeswalker Control”

I have been playing my own independently developed BW Superfriends (aka “Oath of the Hatef%&k”) variant since the first day the planeswalker legend rule change took effect. I only play on paper, but I play at a pretty competitive LGS with 25-40+ players twice a week. My current record is 41-18-1 across all versions, for a 68% win rate. That’s pretty good for a player like me, and far better than I’ve done with other decks I’ve played

This deck is real and has legs, I predict. But I think the popular lists based on the MTGO results are too heavy on card draw (it never feels good to draw a Night’s Whisper off a Night’s Whisper–OK well maybe against 8-Rack) and 5- and 6-drop spells, and too light on threats.

68% is a good win rate, Nat! Care to share your list? I might want to try it out and see how it fares against the rest of our Modern gauntlet.

I also agree that drawing a Night’s whisper off another one is quit.. meh. But in a war of attrition, it’s actually better, rather than drawing something else that’s “blank” when you need to get ahead. If you have better ideas, share away!

I like your build. It looks like something that I could actually try for testing for coming Modern tournaments. Right now, I’m playing the deck I featured last week and it’s doing pretty well. Your version is very appealing, though. Might give this a try. Thanks, Nat!

Current metagame: 12/1 – 12/31

NOTE: Metagame % is calculated from the unweighted average of all MTGO leagues, paper T8s/T16s, and GP/PT/Open Day 2s in the date range. Data is tracked in the Top Decks page, which you can browse for more details.